Actus, LLC

I'll research this company to verify its profile and litigation posture.

Let me verify ownership, history, and the second litigation round.

Actus, LLC is a Texas limited liability company with its principal place of business in Marshall, Texas — the seat of the Eastern District of Texas. Public reporting described it as "recently formed" when it filed its first suits in April 2009, indicating an entity created around that time. No employee count, revenue figure, or corporate parent is publicly disclosed; every source describing it labels it a patent-holding company rather than an operating business, and no products or services attributable to Actus have been identified.

Operations / assets. Actus has no discernible operating business. Its assets are patent rights covering "Method and Apparatus for Conducting Electronic Commerce Transactions Using Electronic Tokens" — U.S. Patent Nos. 7,328,189; 7,249,099; 7,177,838; and 7,376,621. The applications were originally filed by PayByClick, with Marvin T. Ling listed as inventor. The claims describe e-commerce systems in which vendors issue digital "tokens" that customers use to purchase or rent goods, with compensation transferred between participating vendors; court filings describe the asserted claims as covering prepaid/gift-card and online payment functionality. Actus asserted the patents as owner or exclusive licensee.

Litigation posture. The structured data shows Actus as plaintiff in 1 of 1 tracked cases and defendant in 0 — the classic profile of a non-practicing entity. Its filings were concentrated in the plaintiff-friendly Eastern District of Texas (Marshall Division), and contemporaneous coverage characterized it as a patent-holding/assertion entity. It asserted patents it acquired or exclusively licensed rather than ones it developed.

Notable cases. Actus, LLC v. Bank of America Corp. et al., No. 2:09-cv-102 (E.D. Tex.), filed April 9, 2009, named roughly 20 defendants including Bank of America, MasterCard, Visa, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, Google, Walmart, Disney, and Western Union. Defendants moved to dismiss on joint-infringement grounds; the court denied dismissal in February 2010, and the case proceeded toward claim construction. A later wave targeted retailers and e-commerce operators (Apple, Amazon, Target, Best Buy, Starbucks, and others). Reported settlements include WildTangent (August 2009) and Target (July 2010).